casetti. theory, post-theory, neo-theory

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Francesco CasettiCinmas: revue d'tudes cinmatographiques/ Cinmas: Journal of Film Studies, vol. 17, n 2-3, 2007, p. 33-45.

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"Theory, Post-theory, Neo-theories: Changes in Discourses, Changes in Objects"

Theory, Post-theory, Neo-theories:Changes in Discourses,

Changes in Objects

Francesco Casetti

ABSTRACT

Over the past ten years, film theory has been openly challengedby the tenets of film history, cultural studies, aesthetics and phi-losophy. The decline of so called Grand Theory has made pos-sible the emergence of a new paradigm. This relative eclipsing offilm theory is the sign of a three-fold problem within cinemastudies. First, film in its new formats and with its new supportsis no longer a unique and consistent object which can be sub-jected to specific forms of research. Film theorys weakness isthus a sign that film, as an object, is now dispersed. Second,cinema has always been at the crossroads of a great number ofdifferent fields. Its history is an amalgam of the history of media,the performing arts, visual perception, modern forms of subjec-tivity, etc. Film theorys weakness is symptomatic of the urgentneed to rethink a history that was never unique or unified.Third, in our post-modern era any recourse to rationality seemsto be a trap, the object of study itself being refractory to anykind of schematization. Film theorys weakness is indicative ofthe need to maintain an open approach to the subject. Throughthese three issues, we are witnessing the emergence of a new the-ory, both informal and dispersed, which is manifested in a vari-ety of discourses that are content to gloss the phenomenon inorder better to understand the cinema and facilitate its socialrecognition.

Cine?mas 17, 2:Cinmas 17, 1 13/11/07 16:25 Page 33

1. Theory and Post-theoryFilm theory has always been a kind of discourse meant to

comprehend what cinema is, what it could be, and why it iswhat it is. The title of the volumes which collect Andr Bazins(1958-62) writings, Quest-ce que le cinma?, is in this respectexemplary: in its dryness, it reveals the fact that theoretical dis-course is intended to explore, define and generalize. We have tobe aware of the existence of theoretical styles, and even theo-retical paradigms, that are very different from one another: afterthe Second World War, film theory moved from the purpose offinding the very essence of cinema to that of exploring a set ofthemes connecting cinema with the cultural field. Whateverthe differences, at the core of film theory there is always theattempt to provide comprehension. In this sense, film theorymay be confrontedand comparedwith other sorts of dis-courses. It might be compared, for example, to scientific theories(even though it is hard to imagine a film theory with the samelevel of formalization). Or to literary theories (even though thischoice frames film as a purely aesthetic fact). Or even to thepractical explanations that we use in our everyday life, whichare intended to explain the way in which we must take anobject or event and what we must expect from it. This thirdaspect highlights the very fact that a theoretical discourse is large-ly designed to define, not just an object or an event, but the wayin which this object or event is seen within a society, and there-fore how it reveals itself to members of that society. Functioningas a sort of gloss to the cinema phenomenon, film theorybrings to light the way in which cinema makes itself recognizableand is recognized by a community. Theory thus has not only adefining power; it also has an acknowledging power.

Over the past ten years, theory lost its relevant place amid thediscourse on cinema. Today this situation is changing. Theory,after this period of eclipse, is returning in diverse and often con-trasting ways. Varying factors contributed to this crisis. Aboveall, there was the exhaustion of the paradigm of subject position-ing which dominated the discourse of the 1970s and 80s andwhich became victim to its own rigidity and repetition. Duringthe 1990s, it became clear that this paradigm gave rigid responses

34 CiNMAS, vol. 17, nos 2-3


to diverse and fluctuating situations. It was not able, in otherwords, to provide responses to the questions which began to beposed. The crisis of this paradigm was accelerated by the polemicput in motion by David Bordwell and Nol Carroll (1996) intheir book Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. Against theunifying paradigm of Grand Theory, Bordwell and Carrollcontrasted the use of piecemeal theories tied to case studies andbased on empirical research. Notwithstanding this focus on thepiecemeal, Bordwell and Carroll continued to argue that theoryhas a useful moment in which it might generalize its acquisi-tions. This generalization, however, should emerge from obser-vation, pass through a hypothesis and then be verified in con-crete terms. Hence Bordwell and Carroll were not against filmtheory per se: they wanted a theory which would adopt scientificprocedures and not pretend to or promote comprehensiveness.And yet, their polemic did not produce its desired outcome: itwent to the heart of a way of theorizing which had already beenoverturned and, rather than favouring the growth of light theoryat the expense of hard theory, it opened theory up to a series ofad hoc studies which enabled cinema to be understood in itsspecificity but not in its generality. Film studies accordinglyacquired knowledge but lost its referential framework.

Before attempting to understand the development of post-theory it might be useful to pose a question which is, perhaps,perverse. Is the retreat of film theory attributable only to a crisisin a paradigm which dominated film theory for over twentyyears? Or is it instead due to more profound transformations? Iwould like to advance a hypothesis: if during the 1990s theorymet an impasse, it was not only because it had exhausted amodel and did not immediately propose another. It was becausethere were fewer presuppositions which could be brought totheory and, more radically, there were fewer reasons to defendand define its subject of study on the social scene.

2. Vanishing CinemaWhat the eclipse of theory might reveal, first of all, is the

vanishing of cinema. There is no more theory because there isno more cinema.

Theory, Post-theory, Neo-theories: Changes in Discourses, Changes in Objects 35


Since the second half of the 1990s, it has become evident thatcinema is undergoing a deep transformation, one more pro-found than the numerous changes it encountered earlier in itslife. The shifts are so radical that cinema seems to be on thepoint of disappearance rather than transformation. On the onehand, cinema is re-articulated in several fields, too differentfrom each other to be kept together. On the other hand, thesefields are ready to be re-absorbed into broader and more encom-passing domains. Cinema has subsequently exploded and nolonger boasts its own territory. Although synthetic, lets thinkfor instance of what emerges from media convergence and thedigital revolution. What we have is a plurality of supports (pho-tographic image/digital image), a plurality of industrial branches(cinema, entertainment, TV, news, etc.), a plurality of products(fiction, documentary, archival materials, etc.) and a plurality ofmodes of consumption (in a film theatre, in a multiplex, athome, through cable TV, exchanged on the Internet, or seen ona mobile phone). Film fits all these situations. At the same time,films can also be enclosed as a supplement to newspapers andmagazines; they can be treated as TV shows and placed into theflow of TV programming; they can nourish forum discussionsamong passionate cinephiles or be the subject of correspondenceamong hackers; they can find their place in a DVD collection;and so on. Cinema is everywhere and nowhere.

In other words, beginning in the second half of 1990s, thefilm landscape changedto the point that it seems to haveevaporated. A film can have a composite origin (Hollywood aswell as home-movies, but also the re-editing of work exchangedthrough peer-to-peer networks); it can travel through severalchannels, each of them enabling it to model itself in a differentway (an image projected on the screen, a videotape, a digitaldisc, a background for multimedia shows, etc.); it can be part ofdifferent communities, performing a specific social function ineach one of them (as an object of entertainment, as an object torent or to purchase, as a piece of a collection, as an element ofan artistic installation, as an object of desire, etc.). If cinema hadjust one face for a long time, this new scenery multiplies its fea-tures, connecting each trait to broader, global situations, widen-



ing and confusing an identity that had been considered stablefor years. What was once cinemathe feature fiction film basedon the photographic image to be seen in a movie theatre togeth-er with other movie-goersnow has to deal with many otherformats, with many other physical supports and with manyother consumption environments. Besides entertaining, cinemaalso belongs to the fields of performance, collection, individualexpression, TV market, media events, etc. In all these differentdomains, cinema can either be comfortable or become lost.One, None and a Hundred Thousand : Luigi Pirandellos line isperfectly applicable to contemporary cinema.

The retreat of theory could be indicative of this new status ofcinema. Cinema is no longer theorized (at least: not theorized asit previously was) because it no longer has an identity and aplace (it has many identities and places, and no one at the sametime). Silence is a symptom of loss. In this respect, some reac-tions are quite interesting. On the one hand, there is a moregeneral landscape into which film is finally inserted: the bookCinema Effect by Sean Cubitt (2004) is an attempt to take intoaccount the entire media system as a point of reference. On theother hand, the concept of cinema is being re-articulated: JanetHarbord (2002) in Film Cultures claims that today cinemaresponds to different film cultures, established through differ-ent practices, different institutions and different discourses.Theory is where we may recognize a dispersedand likelylostobject.

3. An Object that Never ExistedThe eclipse of film theory reflects not only cinemas disap-

pearance but also the awareness that it has never existed assuch. Cinema has always been a multifaceted object, rooted inseveral territories. It is true that it has been labelled with a uni-vocal and unifying definition; but it is also true that now, afterthe fact, as it were, it could be much more useful to think of itas a plural and disseminated entity, free of a single identity. Inthis respect, the retreat of theory may be considered indicativeof the difficulty in recognizing cinema and its history as a spe-cific field.



New historicism strongly insisted on the fact that cinema hasalways been entwined with many other social institutions. It isnot easy to understand how cinema was born and developed. Inorder to do so, we have to think about it as a link in a net thatjoins the history of scientific discoveries with the theatre, mod-ern forms of entertainment, narration, mass media, public opin-ion, urbanization and so on. In this regard, it is extremely sig-nificant that in a recent issue of Cinema Journal both CharlesMusser (2004) and Janet Staiger (2004) question the appropri-ateness of the concept of the history of cinema. As a conse-quence of this questioning, Musser prefers to bring cinema backto the history of theatre culture and moving images, whileStaiger relates it to media history. This seems to be a shared ten-dency and we can find it in the work of scholars such as TomGunning, Dudley Andrew, etc. For them, cinema is a sort ofgateway, a crossroads in which different aesthetic, cultural andsocial processes are connected. Thereby, due to this gatewayrole, cinema does not constitute a bound and determined field.What matters here are not its internal affairs, but the ways inwhich cinema helps to recall, connect and re-articulate sur-rounding fields. In this sense, cinema does not have its own his-tory; it shares others history. It has never had an identity, otherthan an illusory one: what has been called from its birth cine-ma was in fact the intersection of broader and deeper forces.

Of course, in an after the fact kind of way, someone mayclaim that a gateway also has its own identity. If the roads lead-ing to it take a certain direction after passing through it, it isclear that the crossroads has specificity. Cinemas ability to con-dition social and cultural processes can thus be considered evi-dence of its status as an identifiable entity. I believe this aware-ness, although somewhat unclear, justifies the early idea ofcinema as something that can be thought of and discussed initself. In any event, for the scholars of 1920s and 30s, film pro-vided evidence; for the new historians of the 1990s film is acomponenteven a decisive oneof some other field. It can betheorized only as a residual element.

In other words, in this new historiographic visionwherethere is no more history of cinema but many histories in



which cinema participates in a secondary role (and often in dis-guise)cinema tends to be replaced by the cinematic. Therecent (and controversial) book by Jonathan Beller (2006), TheCinematic Mode of Production: Attention, Economy, and theSociety of the Spectacle, is in a certain sense a good example ofthis shift from cinema to the cinematic. In a more general way,the success of social history seems to support this route, the endof which might still be theory, but a (critical) theory of the cul-tural and social processes which form a distinctive sign ofmodernity.

4. The End of ExplanationThe third reason for the weakening of film theory may be

found in the weakening of the social need for explanation.Theory has always been an attempt to explain cinemato

explain what it is and how it works. Such a task presupposesthat we deal on the one hand with an object definable anddefined by general laws and stable processes, and on the otherhand with a discourse able to foreground the rationality of thisobject. Both aspects are now jeopardized.

Lets take Bordwell and Carrolls (1996) Post-Theory. Theirdecision to prioritize case studies over general analysis, tobuild local and localized models, has two consequences. Thefirst is an implicityet absoluteeradication of the idea of cinema as a unique entity and peculiar unit. In other words,there is no longer something that can be enveloped in a singledefinition, but only cases with their specific conditions ofexistence. The second consequence of their prioritization oflocalized case studies is the risk of ad hoc interpretations, capa-ble of describing a single feature or a single phase of cinema, butunable to catch both the connection of the analysed phenome-non to a broader context (whatever this might be: history ofcinema, history of mass entertainment, history of media, etc.)and its actual meaning. We appear to be condemned to investi-gating fragments without being aware of their specific role inthe larger framework of which they are a part. In such a situa-tion, it is quite hard to theorize what film is and how it works.Nothing really authorizes us to enlarge our evidence or our



discoveries. Of course, Bordwell and Carroll are still confidentthat film studies can provide a generalization. But because weare dealing with a fragmented object with no unity and withsingle interpretations with no extensions, nothing guaranteesthe validity of a general statement. Post-theory thus sees theburial of film theory.

The difficulty in locating a unifying explication has to do notonly with the investigated object, but also with discourse itself.In particular, what is questioned is film theorys ability to offer arational description of film form without misrepresentation.Beginning in the 1970s, there has been an increasing convictionthat rationality and rationalization are based on real violencetowards the investigated reality, because they apply externalobservational parameters and thus force it into narrow borders.Any discourse which implies a rationalized picture of its objectis, accordingly, innately disrespectful. In return, rationalizationguarantees a grasp on the world in both a cognitive and prag-matic sense. Notwithstanding the clarity it thereby facilitates,this grasp is not useful for an understanding of reality. Theory,inasmuch as it is built on rationalization, claims to grasp themeaning of the investigated phenomenon while actually disre-garding it.

Roland Barthes (1981), in Camera Lucida, approached theworlds complexity without reducing it to uniformity. Hischoice of pursuing a mathesis singularis (that is to say, a scienceconcerning a single object), together with his loving detach-ment (instead of critical distance), offers us a valuable example.On the other hand, analytic philosophy inspired contradictoryyet paradoxically convergent approaches. These scrutinize theconsistency of a discourse and, in this way, try to re-establishroom for rationality. Richard Allen and Malcom Turvey (2001)are, without a doubt, far from any Barthesian position, but theconcerns from which they start are, interestingly, not that farfrom those of Barthes.

6. From Theory to Social DiscoursesLet me summarize what I have been arguing. There is an

enigma. Theoretical discourse has conventionally been used to



comprehend the investigated phenomenon, highlighting itsconditions of existence and the modes in which it has beenthought. Since the mid-1990s, when it might have been pre-sumed that film theory was necessary, we find instead that filmtheory is vanishing. This disappearance of theory may beindicative of many things. First of all, it signals the possible dis-appearance of its object: cinema is no longer what it has been;its changes are so radical that they are equivalent to a death.Second: as historical investigations propose, cinema has neverbeen a unique and identifiable object; it is at the crossroadsof many other histories (the history of art, the history of enter-tainment, the history of media, etc.), and the weakening of theory underlines this fact. Third: there is an increasing de-legitimization of rationality and rationalized discourses. Theyviolate their object; theory grasps reality but also betrays it.

It is true, however, that theory has not completely disap-peared. It continues to constitute itself as a possible reference.The paths which might be followed are many. One hypothesis issuggested by Bordwell and Carroll themselves: two broad areasexist, the history of style (which studies the way cinema repre-sents) and cognitive psychology (which studies the way cinemaproduces meaning). Another path is constituted by culturalstudies, which inheritedamong other discoursesaspects ofsemiotics and critical ideology. This area is therefore focused onboth the way in which filmic representation is socially con-structed and used and the varying ways in which social subjectsand subcultures alike appropriate film, some running distinctlycounter to the dictates of the text. A third and influential pathis that proposed by Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze offers a definition ofcinema which is at once theoretical and historical: cinema is aform of thought which first presents itself as a movement-image(classical cinema) and subsequently as a time-image and, in par-ticular, as a crystalline sign (modern cinema). I would add thatDeleuzes comprehensive model is not dissimilar to our GrandTheory and that, accordingly, it is not surprising that it hasgenerated more repetitions than questionsmore deleu -zianisms than real investigations. Finally there is the path con-stituted by a return to analytic philosophy and, in particular, by



a return to Wittgenstein. This presents itself as moment of theo-retical rehearsal, in which the main concepts of film studiesare clarified and redressed.

Film theory, therefore, continues to live. I would like to con-clude, however, with a final question. What if theory, instead ofhaving vanished only to reappear now through new paradigms,is somewhere else, even in disguise? What if it is still living in askin which is not, of necessity, its traditional one?

Two things are accepted as facts. First, theory does not existanymore, at least as we knew and practised it from the 1920sonwards (with Bla Balzs, Rudolf Arnheim, EugenioGiovannetti, Roger Spottiswoode, Siegfried Kracauer and then,in the post-war period, via Andr Bazin, Edgar Morin, JeanMitry, Christian Metzthe only authentic period in Frenchtheory . . .). Theoretical assumptions were based on a core ofstrong hypotheses and on some exemplary models whose pur-pose was to explore, define and legitimate cinema in its essence,possibilities and entirety, together with all its peculiarities. Thiskind of discourse reached its final expression in Gilles DeleuzesLimage-mouvement and Limage-temps: a gigantic effort to buildan encompassing approach to cinema in order to say everythingabout cinema and to consider cinema as everything. This phaseis definitely over. However, there is a second thing accepted as afact: cinema is still an object of investigation. In fact it isanalysed by historical, aesthetic and cultural studies, as well asby cinephile or promotional discourses. Therefore, cinema isstill something to be explained, even if these explanations arrivetangentially, through ideas that do not involve it directly or aremerely occasional remarks. This raises some more questions: didtheory end up somewhere else? In whose company does itreside? What does it look like now?

Going over the most important thinkers who wrote on cine-ma in the first two decades of the 1900sBlaise Cendrars,Louis Delluc, Jean Epstein, Ricciotto Canudo, Enrico Thovez,Oscar Freeburg, Vachel Lindsay, together with the multitude ofbrilliant reflections often signed with a pen name (for instanceFantasio, who was active in Italy and France at the same time,and who was probably several personalities hiding under one



name)it is clear that they do not need to define themselves asfilm theorists in order to construct theory. They were simplydoing it through their approach to a phenomenon that at thetime was novel. They were thus doing theory in an attempt todefine cinemas outlines and strengths. These thinkers built the-ory, then, through their participation in a rich debate, in whichthe definition of cinema advanced through on-going approxi-mations, internal confrontations and cross-references to thetraits of an originating modernity. Through glossing, in thename of a pragmatic rationality, their work aimed to definewhat was before them: it was in this way that they built theory.After that (and this begins in the 1920s), theoretical discourseassumed more formal and abstract features. After the SecondWorld War it became a true genre, recorded by GuidoAristarco (1951) in his Storia delle teoriche cinematografiche. Inthe meantime, however, theoretical discourse maintained itsoriginal sense of being a sporadic, informal and dialogical obser-vation.

My impression, therefore, is that theoretical discourse todayis moving in the same direction that it travelled in its early his-tory (in a parallel and related move, cinema is now resuming itsearly status as a cinema of attractions). Being a sporadic, infor-mal and dialogical discourse, theory is not recognizable as suchanymore. In other words, rather than offering a controlledmodel that investigates and ratifies quest-ce que le cinma, theo-ry has now become a social discourse which attempts to give ananswer to this question without facing it in its specificity.Theory is a shared knowledge that owes its birth to the earlyintellectual enthusiasm it generated but which operates, in par-ticular, in the folds of the debate. According to RaymondBellour, it is an entre-deux; it falls in-between. After all, cine-ma is an entre-deux as well, lost in-between different forces, sus-pended among diverse ways of expression, divided between art(whose reasons became invisible) and the world of mass media(whose reasons are too overt to be plausible).

Consequently, theory is not (with the obvious exception ofuniversity classes in film theory) a definite discourse anymore.It is a discourse without an identity or homeland. It emerges



like an echo in a network of discourses. Nevertheless, it alsoresponds to a need for comprehension that has never been com-pletely fulfilled.

Theory has not vanished: it is in disguise. It plays hide andseek. And it might be through this game that wewe who stillpersist in calling ourselves theorists, knowing that we might beconsidered anachronistic and slightly patheticare invited toconsider the loss of cinema and the terms of its re-articulation.

Universit Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCESAllen and Turvey 2001: Richard Allen and Malcolm Turvey (eds), Wittgenstein,Theory, and the Arts, London/New York, Routledge, 2001.Aristarco 1951: Guido Aristarco, Storia delle teoriche del film, Torino, Einaudi, 1951.Barthes 1981: Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, New York,Hill and Wang, 1981.Bazin 1958-62: Andr Bazin, Quest-ce que le cinma?, vols. 1-4, Paris, ditions duCerf, 1958-62.Beller 2006: Jonathan Beller, The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention, Economy,and the Society of the Spectacle, Hanover/London, Dartmouth College Press, 2006.Bordwell and Carroll 1996: David Bordwell and Noel Carroll (eds.), Post-Theory:Reconstructing Film Studies, Madison, Wisconsin University Press, 1996.Cubitt 2004: Sean Cubitt, Cinema Effect, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2004.Harbord 2002: Janet Harbord, Film Cultures, London/New Delhi, Sage, 2002.Musser 2004: Charles Musser, Historiographic Method and the Study of EarlyCinema, Cinema Journal, Vol. 44, no. 1, 2004, pp. 101-07.Staiger 2004: Janet Staiger, The Future of the Past, Cinema Journal, Vol. 44, no. 1,2004, pp. 126-29.

RSUM

Thorie, post-thorie, no-thories : changementsdans les discours, changements dans les objetsFrancesco Casetti

Au cours de la dernire dcennie, les tenants de lhistoire ducinma, des cultural studies , de lesthtique et de la philo -sophie ont ouvertement mis en question la thorie du cinma.Le dclin de ce que lon a appel la Grand Theory a permislmer gence dun nouveau paradigme. Cette relative clipse de lathorie du cinma est lindice dun triple problme au sein destudes cinmatographiques. Premirement, le film, qui se mani -feste dsormais par lentremise de nouvelles modalits et de



nouveaux supports, napparat plus comme un objet unique etconsistant, susceptible de se prter des recherches spcifiques.La faiblesse de la thorie du cinma indique donc que lobjet film est maintenant une entit disperse. Deuximement, lecinma a toujours t, au fil du temps, au croisement dunegrande varit de domaines et son histoire est un amalgamedhistoire des mdias, du spectacle, de la vision, des formesmodernes de subjectivit, etc. La faiblesse de la thorie ducinma est symptomatique dun besoin pressant de repenser unehistoire qui na jamais t unique, ni unifie. Troisimement, encette re postmoderne, tout recours la rationalit apparatcomme un pige, lobjet de recherche lui-mme tant rfractaire toute forme de schmatisation. La faiblesse de la thorie ducinma tmoigne, en fait, de la ncessit de maintenir uneapproche ouverte du sujet. travers ces trois problmatiques,cest lmergence dune nouvelle thorie que nous assistons,une thorie la fois informelle et disperse, qui se manifeste parlentremise dune varit de discours se contentant de gloser surle phnomne, en vue de mieux comprendre le cinma et defaciliter sa reconnaissance sociale.



casetti. theory, post-theory, neo-theory

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